Nothing in tests are fast enough for 1/1 Gbit?

[AtotehZ]

Hello,

I'm upgrading to 1 Gbit net soon and I'm pretty sure my AC66U router will struggle with that, which is why I'm here.

I'm looking for solutions that can better accommodate those speeds without costing an arm and a leg.

My problem is that... every single test I find on the forums show speeds below 1000Mbps. This makes it really hard to find the right hardware.

I have a feeling I might need to run pfsense on a system with a 2.5Gbit port, but if there are other solutions as well I'm all ears.

I've actually asked a few places how best to do this and no-one gave a reason for their answer... and noone gave the same answer.

I'm new to pfsense and facilitating gigabit connections, but I'm not technologically illiterate. I'll do my best to understand it if given a hint at what I need to understand.
My goal is to get as close to 2048Mbps total throughput as possible for around $250. I don't know if this is impossible, but I already have a bunch of hardware laying about.

 

[thiggins]

Maximum TCP/IP throughput on a 1 Gbps Ethernet connection is around 942 Mbps, due to protocol overhead.

So, yes, you need to have > 1 Gbps Ethernet to see > 1 Gbps throughput.

 

[L&LD]

What hardware do you have laying around? Is your budget in USD?

There is no doubt pfSense will offer you those speeds, wired. But even without routing duties, the RT-AC66U will struggle with anything over 300Mbps symmetrical when you have more than a handful of client devices doing modern network things.

You will quickly blow your budget with multiple 2.5GbE Ports on that pfSense build without any leftover for the Wi-Fi side of things, very quickly, depending on the hardware on hand.

An RT-AX86U is (or should be) in your price range. It will give you great Wi-Fi, a 2.5GbE Port, and the lowest latency consumer router I have used on my 1Gbps symmetrical up/down Fibre ISP connection.

Asus RT-AX86U review: The best Wi-Fi 6 router for the money - CNET

With the hardware you have and the RT-AX86U, you can be set up for one fast network with pfSense doing the routing and the Wi-Fi handled by the new Asus.

See the link in my signature below for the RT-AX88U comments and note, I sold the RT-AX88U for the RT-AX86U because it's better.

 

[AtotehZ]

I currently have 500/500 Mbit. and the AC66U has been able to run 400Mbps symmetrical with some 50 peers connected, but aside from that I agree with everything.

After I made this post I found the AX86U through a separate recommendation, this confirms that it might be a good purchase. I think I even read the article you're linking to.

I bought 2 mini PC's recently. One of them has 2 ethernet ports and a Ryzen 4700u. The other hardware is a mini itx machine with an addon PCIe slot. Could use that for a 2.5Gbit ethernet card.
Also got a couple of old routers with perfectly fine wifi that can be used as access points and enough switches.
Dunno if it can be used for anything, but I did read about one guy who Frankensteined a router out of spare parts.

@thiggins I have the utmost respect for the work you're doing, but your explanation didn't tell me why you're not testing anything beyond 1 Gbps. If something faster exists, isn't it relevant to test it? Is it because it would invalidate other findings to use a different protocol?
EDIT: I think I get what you're saying. You're saying that most people don't have a LAN connection faster than 1Gbit anyway, so testing beyond it is almost pointless and would only help people in a professional environment designed for faster speeds anyway.
I've seen some solutions where you run 2 cables from the router to the PC and combine the connection, but I don't know how well it works and it would be impossible with my setup regardless. Wires in walls.

Thank you for responding both of you.

 

[thiggins]

Product testing stopped 2 years ago, but will restart soon. I'm looking into upgrading the testbeds to handle 2.5G Ethernet.

I've never bothered testing with aggregated connections because aggregation doesn't provide higher throughput for a single connection.

I'm sure someone will correct me, but I don't think there are many (any?) routers with multiple 2.5 or 10 Gbps ports that can be used on WAN and LAN simultaneously. A 2.5G WAN port should allow > 1 Gbps aggregate throughput to multiple WLAN devices. So I will look into that test case.

 

[L&LD]

@thiggins, sorry to correct you.

QHora-301W | Next-Generation Wi-Fi 6 Dual-port 10GbE SD-WAN Router | QNAP

Two 10GbE ports and four Gigabit ports for flexible LAN and WAN deployment.

 

[thiggins]

I figured you'd be the first to jump in. The just-announced TP-Link Archer AX206 has 10 Gbps WAN/LAN SFP+, 10 Gbps WAN/LAN, and 2.5 Gbps WAN/LAN

 

[L&LD]

I saw that too, but, it's TP-Link! lol...